VIII.            Is the News Media Politically Biased and, If So, How Does It Influence Us?  Discussion Questions

  1. Thomas Patterson, "Doing Well and Doing Good: How Soft News and Critical Journalism are Shrinking the News Audience and Weakening Democracy" (skim for overview of trends in news coverage).
  2. Martin Gilens and Craig Hertzman. "Corporate Ownership and News Bias: Newspaper Coverage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act." Journal of Politics, 62 (May, 200):369-386.
  3. Kim Fridkin Kahn and Patrick J. Kenny 2002. “The Slant of the News: How Editorial Endorsements Influence Campaign Coverage and Citizens’ Views of Candidates.” American Political Science Review Vol. 96(2): 381-394.
  4. James Druckman and Michael Parkin. 2005. “How Editorial Slant Affects Voters.” Journal of Politics. (skim)
  5. Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, Chapters 5 and 6. (racially biased news portrayals of welfare). 
  6. Franklin Gilliam and Shanto Iyengar. 2000. "Prime Suspects: The Influence of Local Television News on the Viewing Public. American Journal of Political Science 44(3): 560-573.

 

See the Primer on Making the News and News Bias

 

Overview:

What are some of the problems with studying news bias, according to the authors?

 

Patterson:

  1. How important is the news media’s role in a democracy? To what extent are we dependent on the news media for political information? Can other institutions aid in this process? 
  2. Nearly everyone agrees that news coverage in mainstream news is becoming more negative and entertainment-oriented. Why do you think this has happened and what are the consequences likely to be? Do you agree with Patterson?
  3. Do you have any reason to believe that trust in the media or views about media bias have improved or gotten worse since Patterson’s study?
  4. In what ways might Fox News be a good/bad development for the news industry? For democratic citizens? Is Fox news just doing what the other networks do, only from a perspective that academics are less enamored with?
  5. Why are younger citizens turning away from the news?

 

Gilens and Hertzman:

  1. What kind of approach do they use and why is it an improvement over others? Why do they study Newspaper Coverage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act?
  2. What do the authors find and what are some of the more important implications of their findings? How generalizable are their findings? 

 

Kahn and Kenny:

  1. How does the authors’ study improve on other studies of news bias in elections?
  2. How did the authors measure news bias?
  3. Under what conditions does news bias influence voters in senatorial campaigns? Is this an important effect or not?
  4. Are there any alternative explanations for the authors’ findings?

 

Druckman and Parkin

  1. How do the authors improve on Kahn and Kenny’s study of bias in elections?
  2. How do the authors define and measure news slant?
  3. Are there any alternative explanations for the authors’ findings?

 

Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, chs. 5 & 6

  1. Can we say from Gilens’ findings that news coverage of poverty in the U.S. is racially biased or not? In what ways and with what likely effects on public opinion? How might we study the effects on public opinion?
  2. What are the likely causes and consequences of news coverage of poverty?

 

Gilliam and Iyengar

  1. Is news coverage of violent crime racially biased?
  2. How is the authors’ study an improvement over Gilens’? What are the trade-offs between internal and external validity in this study?
  3. How convincing is the authors’ argument that people have a violent crime script in their heads that they use to interpret news stories?
  4. In what important ways do whites and blacks differ in their reactions to the news stories?